Personally, I can't describe any difference or similarity between the two. One is six, the other, half a dozen. If anyone claims they get something out of their works, I ask them to say what it is, and I ask them to show me passages and ask them to show me the connection between the two. I doubt anyone can come up with anything sensible for the connection. If yes, someone can come up with something sensible for a connection between the read material and the interpretation, furthermore it is a non-disputable transliteration, then I am wrong. But so far nobody has proved me wrong on this.

The only theory of meaning Wittgenstein ever published was in the Tractatus, which was a solipsistic, subjectivist or idealistic doctrine of meaning that constituted conclusions he drew via methodological solipsism , that is to say by phenomenological investigation strictly in the first-person, that discounted the applicability and relevance of third-personal scientific rationalisization.

And the later Wittgenstein, whose solipsistic methodology remained the same as the earlier Wittgenstein and who now directly asserted that philosophy was purely therapeutic and descriptive and wasn't in the business of proposing theories, didn't immediately contradict himself by proposing the frankly ridiculous theory attributed to him that meaning is grounded in inter-subjective agreement or in some publicly obeyed rule-set sent decreed from above by the guardians of meaning in Platonia.

The confusion here, seem to partly stem from the public's lack of understanding of the positivistic epistemological ideas of his time that he was attacking, as well as a general lack of awareness regarding Wittgenstein's so-called "middle period", in which he wrote about his phenomenological inquiries and negative conclusions that there was no hope of obtaining a phenomenological theory of meaning of the sort proposed his earlier self proposed.

But that doesn't mean Witt then concluded "in that case, by appealing to the law of excluded middle realism is true. I propose a new epistemological foundation in which there is only one sort of meaning that is decided by the public, platonia or scientific naturalism in a mind-independent reality". All he concluded is that due to the overwhelming complexity and uncertainty of phenomenological analysis, it is impossible for himself to give an exhaustive and unconditional phenomenal theory accounting for his own use of words.

It is therefore understandable, as to why Wittgenstein was sympathetic towards Heidegger and could personally relate to Being and Time on the one hand, while at the same time insinuating that Being and Time was nonsensical when viewed as a collection of propositions with an inter-subjectively determinable truth-value.

Nonsense doesn't mean "false", it merely refers to an inability to determine the sense of a word when it used in a context from which it did not originate. Wittgenstein's sympathies towards Heidegger demonstrate that he did not believe the most important types of meaning to be inter-subjectively decided. Only inter-subjective meaning is inter-subjectively decided.

We can all agree that we can relate to Being in Time, without pretending to ourselves that we understand each-other's understanding of this work when viewing our agreement from the perspective of a different language-game. — sime

Thank, you, @slime. You have given me more insight into the works of these two great misspent minds than the ten years of post-doctorate philosophical fellowship I do not have studying the works of Witt and Heid. In fact, getting ANY meaning directly reading the two, pages side-by-side, seems like a game of Seek-and-Heid. I am not being facetious, I mean it that I value your description, as it gave me acceptable knowledge. Very much like the in-the-face difference described by @Banno, whose declared insight was, quoted not verbatim, "one was a weatherman, the other, a soldier." Well, duh. That is not the kernel of the difference between the philosophy of the two. One was blue eyed, the other brown eyed, or one was 5'8", the other, 5'9". Or one used to shave with blades, the other, with a razor.

It's true that you CAN read their professions into their psychological differences, but while psychological disposition may influence one's philosophy, the philosophy of a thinker are not determined purely by the psychological disposition.

Not Spinoza, not Hume, not Kierkegaard, not Schopenhauer, not Nietzsche, not Zapffe, not Sartre, not Merleau-Ponty, not ... but Heidi?! C'mon. :roll: — 180 Proof

I said , AMONG the first. I would not include Spinoza, Hume or Schopenhauer among this group. They maintain a clear separation between what they call
emotion and what they consider as the rational, the intentional, the cognitive. If you’d like to summarize for me your understanding of how Spinoza integrates emotion and rational thought I’ll show you how it differs from Heidegger.


. Sartre and Merleau-Ponty were directly influenced by Heidegger , but even so we don’t find affectivity, as Befindlichkeit , being give the central importance it has for Heidegger.

Wittgenstein's sympathies towards Heidegger demonstrate that he did not believe the most important types of meaning to be inter-subjectively decided. Only inter-subjective meaning is inter-subjectively decided. — sime

I know that there are many , often opposed readings of Witt. An example of what I would call a
conservative reading is that of Peter Hacker. At the other end of the spectrum are writers like Dreyfus, Lyotard, and Rorty. Where do you see yourself on this left-right continuum of Witt interpretations?
I want to add that there seems to be a converging consensus among philosophers and psychologists influenced by phenomenologists like Merleau-Ponty, social constructionism and poat-structuralisms like Foucault that intersubjectivity is the primary way that all personal meanings are shaped.

Hopefully this link may give you a feel for how an increasing number of researchers on cognition and emotion are benefitting from Heidegger.

https://www.academia.edu/458222/Heideggers_Attunement_and_the_Neuropsychology_of_Emotion

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/290089652_Why_Mood_Matters

:meh:

In a frivolous mood I pasted the first 1000-odd words of B&T and PI into prowritingaid.com and learnt that the former has a readability grade of 13, and is advised to reduce average sentence length and word length; while Witty is apparently suitable for 4th grade, and might well "use a few longer sentences to add more depth to your writing."

(Which readability index is it that penalises abstract nouns? That's what I was looking for... might make it a feature request, if I didn't dream it. Haha, the dreams of a nominalist.)

Congratulations on a most erudite article. You assume the primacy of the subjective but then seem to think you have demonstrated it. I was unable to follow you notion of embodiment.

Sime's reading of Wittgenstein is... eccentric.

Nice posts Josh, thanks for them.

Heidegger spent the Great War reporting on the weather. Wittgenstein spent it volunteering for the most dangerous tasks to be found on the front line.

I do not get it Banno. Why the idea you need to know someone to appreciate his/her philosophy? Seems a curious example of identity politics. The thing in itself is either rational or bollocks independent of whether Kant was a virgin...

Anyway. What I understand from the posts and from Heidegger keeps me wondering why he resorts to all the doublings, a prereflective I, a reflective I... It seems he does not like the idea of the self being construed by the world in which it finds itself. He seems to hang on to some kernel of authenticity. Why cannot the self reflection and the relation to being not be established by the 'object' by a lack of a better word the world itself. I never understood what was won by the Heideggerian move to keep somekind of existential notion together with his beautiful analysis of enframing. It begets all kinds of problems, on an individual level but also on a collective level. I deal a bit with Heidegger inspired theories of law and I usually find them unnecessarily complicated. I also know a bit of the idea of language games and rule following of Wittgenstelin, but too little to readily compare it, though I feel you are correct to insist that Witty has no answer to individual deviations on the use of language. However, why should it be one of the other? No there is no authentic I, and no, there is no purely publically defined I. I am simply a unique constellation of forces through which other impulses (words, concepts) are iterated but never in exactly the same way. there is nothing authentic about it, just small 'corruptions' , which occur gradually.

I do not get it Banno. Why the idea you need to know someone to appreciate his/her philosophy? — Tobias

Oh, not in all cases - this just struck me as apposite for these two.

Witty has no answer to individual deviations on the use of language. — Tobias

...but I think one might be constructed. Deviation is dependent on there being an established use. Davidson's A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs heads in this direction.

Why the idea you need to know someone to appreciate his/her philosophy? Seems a curious example of identity politics. The thing in itself is either rational or bollocks independent of whether Kant was a virgin... — Tobias

Not at all. I'm with @Banno in this because I think (though he's just another "broken cuckoo clock" to Banno) Freddy was more right than not:

It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now has consisted of – namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious autobiography; and moreover that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown. — Beyond Good and Evil

(Emphasis is mine.)

I read the Tractatus to be saying the opposite in regards to solipsism. The conflicts in our thinking are closely joined to what is said or not said. Instead of a theory of meaning there is this theater of saying. And the observation is not intent upon giving the last word upon meaning. That would interfere with the other observations.

In a frivolous mood I pasted the first 1000-odd words of B&T and PI into prowritingaid.com — bongo fury

I wonder how Shakespeare and Joyce stack up. It would probably love Hemmingway.

Whereas Wittgenstein begins from intersubjectivity in his grounding of meaning — Joshs

No he doesn't. If anything, Witty's model of language is much closer to Heidi's notion of being-with than anything else in the Heideggarian oeuvre.

Congratulations on a most erudite article. You assume the primacy of the subjective but then seem to think you have demonstrated it. I was unable to follow you notion of embodiment. — Banno

Thanks for reading it. I kind of hate to use the term ‘subjective’ to describe what I’m after, and what Heidegger was after. I don’t see that there’s a subject anywhere in our approaches. Every single mention of subjective in Being and Time is in scare quotes for a reason. Dasein is ‘being there’, not a subjectivity. Yes, Heidegger uses terms like self and mineness, but these don’t refer to the relain between a subject and an objective world. All a ‘self’ is is a split , a hinge, a differential between memory, past, history on the one hand , and what is new, other, alien, on the other. This hinge or differential is the ‘now’ moment of experience. In the next moment it will be a changed history,past, memory that meets with a new otherness. Where do you find a subject here? There is no ‘me’ that stands behind or underneath or alongside or around this flow of changing nows. No homonculus or controller or spirit or categorical framer or mind. Nothing but a new past together with a new otherness forming an always new ‘now’ of experience. So why does Heidegger call this ‘mine’? Who or what is this ‘me’? It is nothing but the intimate and intricate way the new present occurs into a past which is changed by that present. It presents the ‘illusion’ of an ongoing flow of self-similarity. So ‘ self’ is nothing but an index of the relationality of one moment to the next of experience.

Whereas Wittgenstein begins from intersubjectivity in his grounding of meaning
— Joshs

No he doesn't. — StreetlightX

Welll, you sure told me. Although I don’t know what you told me. It was more like a drive-by refuting. I know you want to get in on this. I can tell. Yeah, you want it , don’t you?

Well I dunno you just spat out an unsubstantiated one liner so I figured I'd be authorized to do the same.

Just so happens that I'm right.

Well I dunno you just spat out an unsubstantiated one liner so I figured I'd be authorized to do the same.

Just so happens that I'm right. — StreetlightX

You are always right. And you know why? Because you’re a god.

Ok glad we got things cleared up.

@Banno this is basically Wittgenstein:

"Yet one must not fail to notice that we use the term "Dasein-with" to designate that Being for which the Others who are are freed within-the-world. This Dasein-with of the Others is disclosed within-the-world for a Dasein, and so too for those who are Daseins with us, only because Dasein in itself is essentially Being-with. The phenomenological assertion that "Dasein is essentially Being-with" has an existential-ontological meaning. It does not seek to establish ontically that factically I am not present-at-hand alone, and that Others of my kind occur. If this were what is meant by the proposition that Dasein's Being-in-the-world is essentially constituted by Being-with, then Being-with would not be an existential attribute which Dasein, of its own accord, has coming to it from its own kind of Being. It would rather be something which turns up in every case by reason of the occurrence of Others. Being-with is an existential characteristic of Dasein even when factically no Other is present-at hand or perceived. Even Dasein's Being-alone is Being-with in the world. The Other can be missing only in and for a Being-with. Being-alone is a deficient mode of Being-with; its very possibility is the proof of this. On the other hand, factical Being-alone is not obviated by the occurrence of a second example of a human being 'beside' me, or by ten such examples.

Even if these and more are present-at-hand, Dasein can still be alone. So Being-with and the facticity of Being with one another are not based on the occurrence together of several 'subjects'. Yet Being-alone 'among' many does not mean that with regard to their Being they are merely present-at-hand there alongside us. Even in our Being 'among them' they are there with us ; their Dasein-with is encountered in a mode in which they are indifferent and alien. Being missing and 'Being away' are modes of Dasein-with, and are possible only because Dasein as Being-with lets the Dasein of Others be encountered in its world. Being-with is in every case a characteristic of one's own Dasein; Dasein-with characterizes the Dasein of Others to the extent that it is freed by its world for a Being-with. Only so far as one's own Dasein has the essential structure of Being-with, is it Dasein-with as encounterable for Others."

The Philosophical Investigations by any other name. It's even got the bit about engines running in idle and the form-of-life. Practically indistinguishable. I know you are wont to agree.

I do not get it Banno. Why the idea you need to know someone to appreciate his/her philosophy? — Tobias

Although I have to admit Witt’s profound but conventional religiosity through the 1930’s influences my reading of his work, and I contrast it with Heidegger’s complex
destabilizing of theology.

I... It seems he does not like the idea of the self being construed by the world in which it finds itself. He seems to hang on to some kernel of authenticity. Why cannot the self reflection and the relation to being not be established by the 'object' by a lack of a better word the world itself. I never understood what was won by the Heideggerian move to keep somekind of existential notion together with his beautiful analysis of enframing. No there is no authentic I, and no, there is no purely publically defined I. I am simply a unique constellation of forces through which other impulses (words, concepts) are iterated but never in exactly the same way. there is nothing authentic about it, just small 'corruptions' , which occur gradually. — Tobias

Very interesting. Let me address the way you characterize my experiencing of a world and see how it might differ from what I see Heidegger doing.


You talk about the self being construed by the world , Being as established by the object, my self as constellation of forces, corruptions.
So there is an interplay between subjectivity and objectivity. You perhaps would concur if I said these are just poles or aspects of an indissociable interaction between self and world.

But let me observe that the adjectives you use to describe this interaction defines the poles in a certain way. To be more specific, they flesh out the poles as inhering in a certain violence of polarization and arbitrariness. Corruption, force, impulse.( I would also add a host of other terms that various writers on intersubjectivity attribute to Being in the world, like introjection, conditioning , intersection of flows of power) These descriptors are intrinsic to how intersubjectivity creates and recreates subjects in many overlapping approaches in philosophy today ( Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology , social constructionism , post-structuralism , critical theory).

But let me now suggest that such terms of polarizing arbitrariness are only necessary because they assume as certain substantiality the the subjective and objective poles of experiencing a world. The has to be an element of resistantance and force-power implied in each pole in order for change to be a wrenching dislocation, a ‘corruption’.

But what if we give too much power, too much substance to these poles? What if,hidden within what we assume to be the irreducible pre-conditions for being in the world as a play of forces , there is a more intimate, more intricate because more insignificant and insubstantial binary at work in every moment of experiencing? This would be on the order of variations of variations rather than a colliding of impulses. These would be variations of variations with no originating subject or generating power.
Rather than ‘Heideggerian authenticity’ being an attempt to rescue the remnants of the idealist subject from its fragmentation, it would be the opposite , an attempt to show how, functioning beneath the abstractions of ‘fat’ power relations , there is a movement that is at the same time more incessant and radically self-transformational , and more seemingly self-consistent and integral. But this thematic integrity would have to be understood
as not the work of some ghost in the machine, as you and others accuse Heidegger of , the return of idealist solipsism, but the compete opposite. The ongoing ‘self-belonging ‘ of my experience would have to be understood as what is left of moment to moment experiencing when all the abstractive baggage of ‘forceful’ interactive polarity has new deconstructed.
The problem with a Wittgensteinian or Foucualtian model, then, is that it has not gone far enough to unravel idealist assumptions.

The Philosophical Investigations by any other name. It's even got the bit about engines running in idle and form-of-life. Practically indistinguishable. — StreetlightX

What would Witt make of Heidegger’s treating language interchange as idle talk and das man, as impoverished forms of Being’s self-understanding? Why does Gadamer say:

Mit-sein, for Heidegger, was a concession that he had to make, but one that he never really got
behind. Indeed, evenas he was developing the idea, his wasn't really talking about the other
at all. Mit-sein is, as it were, an assertion about Dasein, which must naturally take Mit-sein for
granted. I must say that conscience — having a conscience — no, that wasn't terribly convincing.
"Care" [die Sorge] is always a concernfulness [ein Besorgtsein] about one's own being, and Mit-
sein is, in truth, a very weak idea of the other, more a "letting the other be" than an authentic
"being-interested-in-him."”(A Century of Philosophy. Hans-Georg Gadamer in Conversation
with Riccardo Dottori)

I don’t agree with Gadamer , but not because Heidegger is simply echoing Witt, it because Mitt-Dasein for Heidegger is a true being-with-others that is not simply a Witt-style sharing of language.

Deviation is dependent on there being an established use. — Banno

I think that, instead, established or normative use is just an abstraction from individual ‘deviations’(interpretations). This is what Heidegger is arguing.

because Mitt-Dasein for Heidegger is a true being-with-others that is not simply a Witt-style sharing of language. — Joshs

idk what to tell you other than this is a bad reading of Witt substantiated by nothing. As for idle talk, that's the absolute worst part of Heidi's whole oeuvre, a reflection of his peasant-minded village romanticism.

And the critique of being-with that often gets brandied about - that it doesn't properly establish a relation with the other - is something of a feature, rather than a bug, when translated into Witty's terms. For Witty there are indeed no guarantees about any encounter with the other - or ourselves. Misunderstanding - of ourselves, no less than the other - is rife, and common. 'Authenticity' would be anathema to him. Rightly. Which makes language something of a pharmakon - both a condition of possibility and impossibility of communication and meaning.

Apology to @sime. I spelled your name as Slime. Honest mistake, I have at times double vision of vertical lines. It's due to my diabetes, if my sugar is high or if it is low, I my eyes play tricks on me.

My sincere apology. My vision seems to be sharp today. My mind? I dunno.

Thank you for bringing the articles on the connection between modern research and Heidegger to my attention.

Not at all. I'm with Banno in this because I think (though he's just another "broken cockoo clock" to Banno) Freddy was more right than not:

"It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now has consisted of – namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious autobiography; and moreover that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown."
— Beyond Good and Evil
(Emphasis is mine.) — 180 Proof

Ohhh I agree with that. I find the parallels between Heideggerian thought, ecological thought (in its small is beautiful variation) and national socialist thought fascinating. To me they share a similar sentimentality. What I would reject is the notion that because a biography shines through, the arguments made can be rejected or accepted. Most importantly, that it would be a reason to spare yourself the difficulty of trying to understand a thinker. Witty was part of the wiener Kreis, the wiener Kreis were connected to positivist science, positivist science fails to take understanding (verstehen) into account, presto: no need to try to understand Witty. I read too little Wittgenstein and I am not afraid to admit it. I have some knowledge from reading the tractatus and some secondary sources, but that is it, my problem.


Yes I concur.

But let me observe that the adjectives you use to describe this interaction defines the poles in a certain way. To be more specific, they flesh out the poles as inhering in a certain violence of polarization and arbitrariness. Corruption, force, impulse.( I would also add a host of other terms that various writers on intersubjectivity attribute to Being in the world, like introjection, conditioning , intersection of flows of power) These descriptors are intrinsic to how intersubjectivity creates and recreates subjects in many overlapping approaches in philosophy today ( Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology , social constructionism , post-structuralism , critical theory). — Joshs

Very true and I am influenced by those branches even describing myself as a social constructivist at times (in a sociological sense, not metaphysically). I indeed chose conflict associated terminology, but that is not the end of it for me. In order to conflict, or to force, or any kind of violence, 'care' is presupposed. conflict and violence indicate that there is something that 'matters', that rejects me and that I feel something about. The world inescapably matters to me and that is why I might conflict with it. So in every conflictual relation, a relation of care is presupposed, if we peel the concepts away. My connection to my world or the world however you want is characterised by care. However, there is no primordial pole somehow beyond that relation. There is no "etre de soi" and "etre pour soi" in Sartrean terminology, or better, there might be but it is a product of a way of thinking and not something over and above it.

So there is an interplay between subjectivity and objectivity. You perhaps would concur if I said these are just poles or aspects of an indissociable interaction between self and world. — Joshs

But let me now suggest that such terms of polarizing arbitrariness are only necessary because they assume as certain substantiality the the subjective and objective poles of experiencing a world. The has to be an element of resistantance and force-power implied in each pole in order for change to be a wrenching dislocation, a ‘corruption’. — Joshs

No there does not need to be any such thing. They are merely a product of some vague theories reiterated and changed in the process. A trace?

This would be on the order of variations of variations rather than a colliding of impulses. These would be variations of variations with no originating subject or generating power.
Rather than ‘Heideggerian authenticity’ being an attempt to rescue the remnants of the idealist subject from its fragmentation, it would be the opposite , an attempt to show how, functioning beneath the abstractions of ‘fat’ power relations , there is a movement that is at the same time more incessant and radically self-transformational , and more seemingly self-consistent and integral. But this thematic integrity would have to be understood
as not the work of some ghost in the machine, as you and others accuse Heidegger of , the return of idealist solipsism, but the compete opposite. The ongoing ‘self-belonging ‘ of my experience would have to be understood as what is left of moment to moment experiencing when all the abstractive baggage of ‘forceful’ interactive polarity has new deconstructed.
The problem with a Wittgensteinian or Foucualtian model, then, is that it has not gone far enough to unravel idealist assumptions. — Joshs

I think actually we are not far off. The question though is, as you state yourself, The ongoing self-belonging of my experience would have to be understood. However, that is rather ineluctable. We have no experience without the 'abstractive baggage' of our being in the world. It is all that abstratcive baggage that Heidegger likes to strip away that makes us us. The 'I' is just an interplay (knot) of conceptions beliefs, relations that is tied together in that moment at that place and time. Maybe there is only 'susceptibility', an openness to experience, a 'care locus'.

I don’t agree with Gadamer , but not because Heidegger is simply echoing Witt, it because Mitt-Dasein for Heidegger is a true being-with-others that is not simply a Witt-style sharing of language. — Joshs

Herein lies the problem I have with Heidegger. There is something like a 'true being with others', opposed to what, an untrue being with others? But if I am with others I am with others, there is no true or false. Just like Sorge, care, is not a self relation, it is a relation towards the other. that is what I mean with I as constituted by the world. It is not a self relation that lights a seinsverstehen, it is the other way around. I see that I care about things and realise that there is something like an I.

this is basically Wittgenstein: — StreetlightX

I'm sorry that you think so - perhaps Wittgenstein attracted better translators? :wink: